DEADLY DECEPTIONS

by Bill WENHAM

  “A small older model Honda, sir. A brown one. They are fairly common. I’ve seen it parked outside the cottage here.”

  She put the car in gear and headed for the Appleby estate. Prentiss’s car was easily found a couple of hundred yards to the right of the front gates of the estate. When he was finished with Sir Alfred, Prentiss had expected to just leave and drive away and although he probably had the keys to it with him, he had left the driver’s door unlocked.

  Within easy reach, on the back seat, was a small suit case, which Middleton put inside their own car.

  “Pop the boot lid, will you please, Bristow?”

  She reached under the dash and pulled a latch to release the boot lid and closed the doors again.

  Middleton looked inside but the boot was empty of anything other than the spare tire and jack.

  “Okay, Bristow, we’ll let Sgt. Barnett take care of that being shifted in the morning.”

  “It’s morning now, sir,” Bristow said innocently.

  “I meant later in the morning, when normal people are up and about.”

  “Oh, dear, I don’t the sound of that at all, sir. Are you telling me that you’re not normal? A little quirky, are you? Is that what you’re telling me? But don’t you worry, though, - it’s really not that obvious,” she said with a straight face.

  Middleton blew out an exasperated breath.

  “No more, Bristow, please. Normally I enjoy your smart arse comebacks, but not at one o’clock in the morning. I’m tired and with not hope in hell of seeing my bed at all tonight. So just can it and take us back to the station, please.”

  They got back in the car and drove back to the station in silence. They’d had a very successful night so far and she hoped that she hadn’t overstepped the mark with her boss.

  When they got back to the station, Middleton went on in ahead of her and she brought in Prentiss’s suitcase.

  “Would you mind rustling us up a couple of mugs of tea and a few biscuits, please, if there are any?” he said pleasantly as he put the binder on his desk and sat down behind it.

  Bristow left the suitcase in the outer office and went into the kitchenette. The station itself was unmanned from midnight until 6 a.m. although the constables took it in turns to patrol the community during those hours. All of them were on call should an emergency arise but, apart from the present circumstances, one rarely did.

  A few minutes later Bristow emerged with two steaming mugs of tea and a packet of Peek Frean’s chocolate covered biscuits. She put them on the desk and went to retrieve the suitcase. When she got back, she found that Middleton had cleared space for it on the desk.

  He opened up the case and they both looked inside. It contained some gruesome looking metal objects. Bristow looked horrified.

  “These aren’t medical instruments, surely?,” she gasped.

  Middleton reached into the case and removed two books. They both had the Gestapo crest embossed in gold leaf on the front covers. He took one for himself and handed the other, unopened, to Bristow. As he opened his, he heard Bristow give a sobbing gasp.

  “Oh, my good Lord!” she said, almost struggling to breath. “These photos can’t be real, surely! They are bloody inhumane, simply ghastly, sir!” she said and stumbled to her feet. She burst into tears, rushed out of the office and he could hear her retching in the tiny station toilet.

  Middleton got up, walked around the desk and picked up the book from the floor where she had dropped it. He flipped through it and put it back down on the desk. His normally pleasant face looked grim. A moment or two later, Bristow came back. She was pale and had a guilty look on her face.

  “I apologize, sir. I’m so sorry, that wasn’t very professional of me,” she said quietly.

  “No need for apologies, Sally. I very nearly joined you in there,” he said gently. “Me, I’ve seen death and mutilation in many forms in my time, but never anything like that. What a bunch of sadistic bloody maniacs!”

  Bristow looked at him with tears in her eyes.

  “How could any sane person do such things to other people?” she said in a choked voice. Middleton had never even seen her on the verge of tears before, let alone openly crying.

  “I think that, from what we’ve read in there,” she said, indicating the binder also on the desk, “something like this was what Prentiss had in mind for Sir Alfred. Otherwise, why would he have had these tools?”

  She reached over the desk and picked the other book that Middleton had opened but had not had a chance to look at. Her eyes opened wide as she flipped through the pages.

  “Sadistic bloody maniacs is right, sir, and if Prentiss was prepared to use those,” she gestured at the rest of the items in the case, “then he was one as well and better off dead.”

  She handed the second book back to Middleton.

  “This is even a step by step bloody instructional manual to do it all by.”

  She burst into tears again and hurried out of the office. He could hear her retching again in the little toilet. While she was gone, he put everything, including the original binder they’d found, back into the suitcase and closed it. He lifted it off the desk and placed it by the wall over by the door.

  When she came back, Middleton pushed her tea mug over to her.

  “This stuff has absolute no medicinal value whatsoever, Bristow, but it won’t hurt you to drink it before it gets cold,” he said.

  Bristow smiled and thought that the fact that he was calling her Bristow again meant that her tearful episode was accepted, forgiven and it was now over. But she knew that she couldn’t have come up with a smart crack right now if her life had depended on it.

  Middleton looked at his watch.

  “I think if we head next door, Bristow, we might still manage an hour or two of shuteye and we can wrap it all up in the morning.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, getting up. She glanced at the suitcase by the door, shuddered, and went over to the front door. Middleton followed her and then locked up once they were both outside.

  They walked into the Inn and up to their rooms. Middleton had made an arrangement, because of their irregular hours, for them to keep their room keys with them.

  “Goodnight, Bristow,” Middleton said as he opened his door.

  “Good morning, sir” she replied and hurried inside. She might shut her eyes but she wouldn’t attempt to sleep. Like your dreams, she thought, you can’t control your nightmares either, can you?

  Middleton sat down in one of the two the upholstered armchairs in his room and thought back over the events of the evening. He was concerned that Bristow had been so upset. Not because she was upset but because she had felt the need to apologize to him for it.

  She had told him once, while they were driving, about her philosophy in life. She said that she always expected the worst – then she was neither surprised nor disappointed when shit happened. Any little thing good that happened was always a plus for her, she said.

  Middleton thought that usually it seemed to take very little to please her or to make her laugh. It was why they got on so well together.

  When she told him about her philosophical views on life, he said, “So, you’re a bloody pessimist, then are you, Bristow”?

  “Not at all, sir. I’m just a realist. It’s a lot more practical than being an optimist. There are far more disappointed optimists in this world than there are hopeful pessimists or realists, anyway,” she said.

  She turned and grinned at him.

  “In a very, very dark room, an optimist will say ‘Look on the bright side’, sir,” she said.

  “And what does a realist say, then?”

  “We say –“I told you so, there’s been a bloody power cut!”

  “And then what do you do?” Middleton asked.

  “We just sit in the dark with the rest of you bloody optimists but we’re the only ones in the room who are neither surprised nor disappointed. We realists accept the situation for what it is while all you o
ptimists sit there and complain about it.”

  “You surprise me, Bristow. I’ve always thought of you as an optimistic person. You also seem to be so happy.” Middleton said.

  “Never believe what you see and very little of what you hear, especially where I’m concerned,” she said.

  “Even about what you’ve just told me?”

  She gave him another mischievous grin and shrugged.

  “Well, now, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?” she said.

  Thinking back to what had happened at the station, Middleton realized that her philosophy might work for most of the time when shit happened but she hadn’t expected shit like this. Tonight Bristow, as a realist, was having a great deal of trouble accepting one of life’s simple and basic realities – that human beings can be the most vicious and brutal of all God’s creatures. He hoped that she would have gotten over it by morning and went to bed for a couple of hours himself.

  When they met for breakfast on the following morning it was quite obvious to Middleton that Bristow hadn’t slept, and had done her best to disguise her red rimmed eyes, but he made no comment. Instead, he said cheerfully as she sat down, “Well, Bristow, I think we are just about done here.”

  Bristow replied, “With the case perhaps, sir, but unless I’m very much mistaken, and you know that I never am, by the way, not with the community.”

  Ah, a quip. That was a good sign, he thought.

  “Er, yes, I did plan to have another word with his Lordship before we leave.” He was about to say ‘based on what we found last night’ but caught himself in time. “Just a little whisper in his ear that he has nothing at all to worry about from us,” he added instead.

  “Do you think that’s wise?” Bristow said.

  “Perhaps not wise, Bristow, but rather necessary in my opinion.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  “I do say so, Bristow,” Middleton said and was surprised when Bristow grinned back at him. Good, he thought, she’s back on form.

  “And then, of course, there’s the lady. Will you be whispering in her ear as well before we leave?”

  His face went beetroot red.

  “What! Whatever do you mean, Bristow?”

  She continued to grin at him.

  “Sir, I’m not blind and I’m not stupid either. Last night I told you to go for it burning the papers and now I’m telling you to go for it with Rachel Donnelly as well,” she said.

  “Bristow, you’re too damned…”

  “I know, sir, smart for my own good, And I think it’s high time for you to be that smart for your own good as well because I think you’d make lovely couple.”

  “A lovely couple!” Middleton spluttered.

  “Calm down, sir. I just meant that I think that you two would be very good for each other. You know she likes you and don’t forget that she has a very nice little….”

  “Bristow!”

  “Cottage, sir. It would be very nice for you in your old age, I would think.”

  “I’ll do the thinking, thank you, young lady, and you just do the driving. Is that clear?”

  “It is, sir, and I just want you to know that when you get it all wrong again, I’ll be quite happy to help you out.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Allenby stared at the phone in his hand for a moment and he felt himself shaking as he slowly replaced it on its cradle.

  Way back in the forties during, and even after the war, he had constantly feared discovery, as did all spies on both sides. But as the years passed, with nothing happening, he had finally been able to put the fear aside and out of his mind.

  He had heard it said somewhere, that a lie, repeated often enough, eventually became accepted as the truth. He had played the role of Sir Alfred Allenby to perfection for many, many years. Everyone else believed it and up until recently, so did he.

  How could anyone else have possibly uncovered his secret?

  He knew that his forged documentation was flawless and he doubted that any members of his former spy ring were still in England, or even still alive for that matter. He believed that only he and Gerda had remained in England after the war and they’d had good reason to stay.

  He sank down into one of his soft leather armchairs beside the phone table and wondered what he should do next.

  The trouble with blackmail, if that was indeed what it was, is that the victim of it never knows who it is that is persecuting him. It is always done through anonymous notes or mysterious and no doubt untraceable phone calls just like this one. And even, if and when, payment is made it is never a hand to hand, face to face transaction and, as he knew from experience – it is never, ever over - until either the victim or the blackmailer dies. He vowed to make sure that, in this case, it would be the latter.

  He had no idea where the new call had originated and even if it could be traced, it would probably be found to have come from a public call box somewhere.

  There was no way to know where to start but one thing was certain. If it was blackmail, the caller would definitely call again. Blackmailers and he felt sure that this was the case, didn’t just make prank calls.

  The next call he received would be the blackmailer’s demands, whatever they may be.

  After Parker Prentiss had confronted him and had killed himself in the process, Sir Alfred realized that he was the original caller who had also repeated his message in German. With Prentiss dead, Sir Alfred had believed that he was safe once again and had put the Prentiss episode out of his mind.

  And now, today, it was happening all over again and also so soon. Had Prentiss been in partnership with anyone, Sir Alfred wondered?

  The call today had been different too. Where Prentiss’s call had been no more than perhaps a dozen words, this one had tended to ramble on. The voice had sounded excited and was definitely another male. Unlike Prentiss’s phone call, this man said that he had positive and documentary proof that Allenby was a fraud.

  Allenby found himself right back where he had started. During the war he’d had the other members of his spy ring for support, and later he also had Gerda, as his wife. At this point in his life, he was alone, old and with no one at all to help him.

  Allenby, a very intelligent man, was puzzled as to how anyone could have uncovered his secret and what possible documentary proof could the man have?

  Commonsense also told him that he must have it or he wouldn’t have dared to make the call.

  These days, and for almost half a century past, the use of the English language had become so natural to Allenby that he now used it exclusively. So much so that when he was shocked or surprised, he even swore in English.

  He did that very volubly right now as he sat in his chair, felt better for it and began to ponder his future.

  In his cottage David Bowen put down his phone and gave a self satisfied smile.

  “Now,” he said triumphantly. “That was easy!”

  There was no one in the cottage to hear either his call or his comment since Bowen lived alone now. His divorce had occurred before his move to Cambridgeshire.

  His divorce had been a very nasty one, for Bowen, at least, since his wife, Diane, had really taken him to the cleaners in the settlement. Bowen had been the guilty party and he had lost his big house in the west London suburbs as a result.

  He had escaped from his marriage with barely enough money to buy what was probably the smallest cottage in Little Carrington. The divorce had also cost him his extremely well paid job as well. That was one of the problems with marrying the boss’s daughter, which had seemed like a very good idea at the time – if his baby didn’t want David any more then her daddy didn’t want him either.

  As soon as the divorce became final, Bowen was unceremoniously escorted out of the building by the company’s security people.

  While he was married and, as he believed, had a secure and promising career, he had spent his income as it had come in. However, David should have heeded the advice of his own father. Fred
Bowen had been fond of telling his son, among other things, “Never shit on your own doorstep, Davey boy, there’s always plenty more fish in the sea. Just cast your net farther afield and no one will ever know.”

  David realized, much too late that he should have dropped his line in a completely different body of water altogether – instead of dangling it in the company’s typing pool.

  The girl had only been a sexy little floozy anyway. The affair had actually meant nothing to either of them. She had been sacked on the spot as soon as their indiscretion was discovered and that was because the stupid little cow had boasted about it to one of her girl friends. Naturally the girl friend had passed it on as a juicy bit of office gossip. The floozy and David had been caught together by Diane as a result.

  The girl was gone and David had lost almost everything he had – his wife, his home, his job, his company car and almost all of his meager savings.

  Diane, with her father’s help, and with that of the company’s team of highly paid lawyers, had bled him dry.

  Gradually, because he certainly didn’t want to go out of his way to make friends in his new community, he became accepted for what he was. Actually he became accepted for what the villagers all thought he was – an oddball artist, and that suited him just fine. Occasionally, but only when asked, he would prepare a poster or two at no charge for a small village function, a dance or a craft sale.

  His new lifestyle suited him quite well for several years until he discovered, Peggy, a kindred spirit in Great Carrington and they became a couple, visiting, but neither of them living in each other’s cottage. It was a very satisfactory arrangement for both of them, since both of them had been badly hurt by their former partners.

  Right up front, David had admitted the affair that had led to his downfall and she had also admitted to being the guilty party in hers as well. They both made it very clear to the other that they weren’t interested in marriage. They agreed to have fun with each other and to part as friends if their relationship should ever fall apart. They would either kiss or shake hands and would both walk away.

  Neither of them would be hurt and it was as good a pre-non-nuptial agreement as any under the circumstances.